Party History

The Communist Party of Bharat(CPB) is a political organisation that is presently based in West Bengal, India where it is more often known asBharater Samyabadi Dal in Bengali language.

Most of the founders of CPB had previously organised themselves in a communist group called The Centre for the Communist Revolutionaries(CCR), West Bengal, India in the year 1999. It was the result of a unity among a communist group, based mainly in Dakshin Dinajpur, West Bengal led by Ranjan Chakraborty and a Calcutta based group mainly dominated by student leaders based in Presidency College, Kolkata. The CCR later, as a part of five communist groups, went on to form the re-united Communist Party of India (Marxist Leninist) (CPI(ML)) under the leadership of Com. Kanu Sanyal through a conference held at Vijaywada, Andhra Pradesh, India in the year 2005.

However, on the question of anticipating the impending outbreak of peasants' movement in West Bengal, that started from Bhangar in South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal and later erupted with full strength in Singur and Nandigram against the imperialist design of globalization and the consequent emerging situation of forming a united front with bourgeoise parties like TrinamoolCongress, the original CCR based group in CPI(ML) decided to go ahead with such an alliance( the reader may refer to the section on Who will win the race for democracyin this site providing the theoretical basis in brief for such alliances). They were, for this, expelled from the CPI(ML).

The erstwhile CCR and CPI(ML) leaders then formed a temporary group under the name CPI(ML) and joined the struggle in Singur. Among them, Com. Ranjan Chakraborty and Com. Barnali Mukherjee were arrested and detained in Chandannagar Jail for several days along with 70 peasants from Singur when the police lathicharged a gherao movent in Singur that was led by the Trinamool chairperson Smt. Mamata Banerjeeon 25th September 2005. Com. Barnali Mukherjee was also a part of the four member hunger strike team that included Smt. Mamata Banerjeeand which executed this programme in December, 2006 in the heart of the city of Kolkata after the government imposed article 144 at Singur and started constructing boundary walls in order to enable the Tatas to go ahead with their Nano factory.

It was this breakaway group from CPI(ML) that included Com. Barnali Mukherjee and was led by Com. Ranjan Chakraborty which later went on to form the CPB. The CPB distanced itself from the later part of Singur fiasco led by Trinamool Congress from the middle of 2008 which it felt had already detached itself from the interest of the people and was now fully serving the interests of the opposite industrialist lobbies only. Almost all other small left groups in Bengal including the SUCI disagreed with us in this point and continued to support TMC right up to the Assembly election 2011.

In the Loksabha electon of 2009, the CPB fielded Barnali Mukherjee as their candidate in the same constituency from where Mamata Banerjee contested and supported the Left front elsewhere. Continuing in the same vein, in the Assembly election 2011 also

it called for unity among all left and democratic forces, including the left front, to resist the impending fascistic uprising of Mamata Banerjee, but it was of no avail. CPB contested one seat (Gangarampur) from Dakshin Dinajpur district and supported Left front in all other seats and even carried out joint campaigns with CPI(M) in several assembly seats in Kolkata, North 24 Parganas, Hooghly and Burdwan districts.

After the TMC has come to power in West Bengal, the CPB in continuing with its struggle has attended joint conventions with other left (including Left front) leaders, especially against all attempts to strangulate democracy in Bengal. It had been in the thick of the recent struggle for the rehabilitation and compensation of the evicted homeless at Nonadanga, Kolkata and the harassment meted out by the Government to reputed scientists and other activists for standing by the homeless.